The sudden appearance of portolan charts, realistic nautical charts of the Mediterranean and Black Sea, at the end of the thirteenth century is one of the most significant occurrences in the history of cartography. Using geodetic and statistical analysis techniques these charts are shown to be mosaics of partial charts that are considerably more accurate than has been assumed. Their accuracy exceeds medieval mapping capabilities. These sub-charts show a remarkably good agreement with the Mercator map projection. It is demonstrated that this map projection can only have been an intentional feature of the charts’ construction. Through geodetic analysis the author eliminates the possibility that the charts are original products of a medieval Mediterranean nautical culture, which until now they have been widely believed to be.
Gold is not what we think. It is usually discussed in the context of wealth and art but this book has a broader subject, so fundamental that it has been largely unremarked. Informed by a mass of recent discoveries and a South American indigenous perspective, it offers a new way of understanding the history of civilization. Gold has been coinage, treasure and adornment. But it has been much more, as the hidden driver of wars and revolutions, the rise and fall of empires and the transformation of societies. As the sun traveled east to west across the sky, gold, incorruptible and corrupting, flowed west to east, hand to hand across the world. That flow has brought empires to grow and collapse and driven plunder, conquest and colonization. It brought about wars and revolutions, empowered new forms of arts and science and created the capitalist consumer economy that dominates us now. All the gold people ever shaped still exists, shining as new; it can be mislaid but never decays. Right from its first appearance on the west shore of the Black Sea, long before the rise of Egypt and Mesopotamia, gold crowned the first proto-king. Ever since, it has been regarded as value incarnate with transcendental power. The quantity we take has been increasing steadily for 6,500 years. Now extraction accelerates. Our gold mountain has doubled in the last fifty years. Yet its price increases faster. While the quantity doubled, its buying power multiplied by six. What does gold do that makes us want it so much? As Alan Ereira reveals in this skilfully woven narrative, gold is the hidden actor that shapes our story.
We are living in the Golden Age of Data Visualization. The COVID-19 pandemic has demonstrated how we increasingly use data visualizations to make sense of the world. Business analysts fill their presentations with charts, journalists use infographics to engage their readers, we rely on the dials and gauges on our household appliances, and we use mapping apps on our smartphones to find our way. This book explains how and why this has happened. It details the evolution of information graphics, the kinds of graphics at the core of data visualization—maps, diagrams, charts, scientific and medical images—from prehistory to the present day. It explains how the cultural context, production and presentation technologies, and data availability have shaped the history of data visualization. It considers the perceptual and cognitive reasons why data visualization is so effective and explores the little-known world of tactile graphics—raised-line drawings used by people who are blind. The book also investigates the way visualization has shaped our modern world. The European Renaissance and the Scientific Revolution relied on maps and technical and scientific drawings, and graphics influence how we think about abstract concepts like time and social connection. This book is written for data visualization researchers and professionals and anyone interested in data visualization and the way we use graphics to understand and think about the world.
• Traces the course of Atlantean civilization through its three empires, as well as the colonies and outposts formed by its survivors in Egypt, Göbekli Tepe, India, Mesopotamia, the Mediterranean, and North and South America • Shows how pyramids and other megalithic monuments testify to the survival of a “Sacred Science” of Atlantean origin and how this Sacred Science provided the foundation for esoteric traditions and secret societies throughout the ages • Draws on more than 500 ancient and modern sources and the author’s own personal exploration of hundreds of archaeological sites Exploring more than 100,000 years of Earth’s history, Marco Vigato combines recent discoveries in the the fields of archaeology, geology, anthropology, and genetics with the mystery teachings of antiquity to investigate the true origins of civilization. Establishing the historical and geological reality of Atlantis stretching all the way back to 432,000 BCE, he traces the course of Atlantean civilization through its three empires, revealing how civilization rose and fell several times over this lengthy span of time. The author shows that Atlantis did not vanish “in one terrible day and night” but survived in a variety of different forms well into the historical era. He reveals how the the first Atlantean civilization lasted from 432,000 to 35,335 BCE, the second one from 21,142 to 10,961 BCE, and the third Atlantis civilization--the one celebrated by Plato--collapsed in 9600 BCE, after the Younger Dryas cataclysm. The author examines the role of Atlantean survivors in restarting civilization in different parts of the world, from Göbekli Tepe and Egypt to India, Mesopotamia, and the Americas. He personally documents their colonies and outposts around the globe, offering unique views of the colossal network of pyramids, earthen mounds, and other megalithic monuments they le behind. He shows how these monuments testify to the survival of a sacred science of Atlantean origin, and he documents the survival of the primeval Atlantean tradition through various secret societies into the modern era. Drawing on more than 500 ancient and modern sources and sharing never-before-seen photographs from his own personal exploration of hundreds of archaeological sites around the world, Vigato shows not only that Atlantis was real but that the whole world is now being called to become a New Atlantis and awaken into a new golden age.
How early did the Chinese explore the world? Did the Treasure Fleets, led by Admiral Zheng He, discover many parts of the world before Christopher Columbus? While it is known that Christopher Columbus discovered America and Europe ushered in the Age of Discovery, there is an ongoing debate on the 'unknown' areas depicted in Western maps from the period and earlier. There is agreement among scholars that certain areas seem to have been mapped out prior to the arrival of Western explorers.Chinese Global Exploration in the Pre-Columbian Era: Evidence from an Ancient World Map analyses the world's first modern map — known as Kunyu Wanguo Quantu (KWQ) 《坤輿萬國全圖》 in Chinese, translated as the 'Complete Geographical Map of All Kingdoms of the World' to demonstrate evidence of Chinese global exploration in the Pre-Columbian era. The map of concern was first printed by Italian missionary, Matteo Ricci in 1602, and has been purported to be of entirely European origin, based on Ricci's former maps which he had brought to China in 1582.This book, thus, seeks to be transformational in presenting essential new insights on Pre-Columbian world history and Chinese global exploration, moving away from the norm of the studies of geography and cartography by:
How did intricately detailed sixteenth-century maps reveal the start of the Atlantic World? Beginning around 1500, in the decades following Columbus's voyages, the Atlantic Ocean moved from the periphery to the center on European world maps. This brief but highly significant moment in early modern European history marks not only a paradigm shift in how the world was mapped but also the opening of what historians call the Atlantic World. But how did sixteenth-century chartmakers and mapmakers begin to conceptualize—and present to the public—an interconnected Atlantic World that was open and navigable, in comparison to the mysterious ocean that had blocked off the Western hemisphere before Columbus's exploration? In Mapping an Atlantic World, circa 1500, Alida C. Metcalf argues that the earliest surviving maps from this era, which depict trade, colonization, evangelism, and the movement of peoples, reveal powerful and persuasive arguments about the possibility of an interconnected Atlantic World. Blending scholarship from two fields, historical cartography and Atlantic history, Metcalf explains why Renaissance cosmographers first incorporated sailing charts into their maps and began to reject classical models for mapping the world. Combined with the new placement of the Atlantic, the visual imagery on Atlantic maps—which featured decorative compass roses, animals, landscapes, and native peoples—communicated the accessibility of distant places with valuable commodities. Even though individual maps became outdated quickly, Metcalf reveals, new mapmakers copied their imagery, which then repeated on map after map. Individual maps might fall out of date, be lost, discarded, or forgotten, but their geographic and visual design promoted a new way of seeing the world, with an interconnected Atlantic World at its center. Describing the negotiation that took place between a small cadre of explorers and a wider class of cartographers, chartmakers, cosmographers, and artists, Metcalf shows how exploration informed mapmaking and vice versa. Recognizing early modern cartographers as significant agents in the intellectual history of the Atlantic, Mapping an Atlantic World, circa 1500 includes around 50 beautiful and illuminating historical maps.
A sweeping exploration of the shaping role of animal skins in written culture and human imagination over three millennia "Richly detailed and illustrated. . . . An engaging exploration of book history."--Kirkus Reviews For centuries, premodern societies recorded and preserved much of their written cultures on parchment: the rendered skins of sheep, cows, goats, camels, deer, gazelles, and other creatures. These remains make up a significant portion of the era's surviving historical record. In a study spanning three millennia and twenty languages, Bruce Holsinger explores this animal archive as it shaped the inheritance of the Euro-Mediterranean world, from the leather rolls of ancient Egypt to the Acts of Parliament in the United Kingdom. Holsinger discusses the making of parchment past and present, the nature of the medium as a biomolecular record of faunal life and environmental history, the knotty question of "uterine vellum," and the imaginative role of parchment in the works of St. Augustine, William Shakespeare, and a range of Jewish rabbinic writers of the medieval era. Closely informed by the handicraft of contemporary makers, painters, and sculptors, the book draws on a vast array of sources--codices and scrolls, documents and ephemera, works of craft and art--that speak to the vitality of parchment across epochs and continents. At the center of On Parchment is the vexed relationship of human beings to the myriad slaughtered beasts whose remains make up this vast record: a relationship of dominion and compassion, of brutality and empathy.
Shedding the Veil is a highly original overview of Europe's exploration and discovery beyond her own confines. It tackles the subject via an analysis of maps dating from circa 1434 to 1865, with an emphasis on the period before 1600. The book begins with an appraisal of the peculiar circumstances which led late medieval Europe to pursue long-distance travel, both overland and by sea, introduces cosmographic traditions inherited from classical times, and investigates pre-Columbian excursions into the western ocean. Finally, the great voyages and mappaemundi of the early sixteenth century are described in depth. After 1600 the focus begins to narrow North America and particularly to the colonization of the American Northeast. All maps discussed in detail are illustrated. 40 full-page b/w plates, 25 full-page color plates.
A chance discovery at a distinguished London map fair in 2012 by a Belgian globe collector produced the most unique of finds: a distinct globe with mysterious images, such as old ships, sailors, a volcano, a hybrid monster, pentimenti, waving patterns, conic individualised mountains, curving rivers, vigorous coastal lines, chiaroscuro and an unresolved triangular anagram, which remains an enigma. The globe is hand-engraved in great detail on ostrich egg shells from Pavia by a left-handed Renaissance genius of unquestionable quality. It shows secret knowledge of the map world from the time of Columbus, Cabral, Amerigo Vespucci and Leonardo da Vinci. Central and North America are covered by a vast ocean. The da Vinci globe originates from Florence and dates from 1504. It marks the first time ever that the names of countries such as Brazil, Germania, Arabia and Judea have appeared on a globe. A Leonardo drawing for this globe, showing the coast of the New World and Africa has been discovered in the British Library. This book brings the reader through a fabulous journey of scholars, maps, riddles, rebuses, iconographic symbols and enigmatic phrases such as HIC SVNT DRACONES to illuminate the da Vinci globe. It details 500 years of mystery, fine scholarship and expert forensic testing at numerous material science laboratories the world over. The da Vinci globe now takes its rightful place, surpassing the Lenox globe, its copper-cast identical twin, as the most mysterious globe of our time. As such, this monograph is an essential text in Leonardo studies and in the history of cartography.
From the author of the award-winning Vermeer's Hat, a historical detective story decoding a long-forgotten link between seventeenth century Europe and China. Timothy Brook's award-winning Vermeer's Hat unfolded the early history of globalization, using Vermeer's paintings to show how objects like beaver hats and porcelain bowls began to circulate around the world. Now he plumbs the mystery of a single artifact that offers new insights into global connections centuries old. In 2009, an extraordinary map of China was discovered in Oxford's Bodleian Library-where it had first been deposited 350 years before, then stowed and forgotten for nearly a century. Neither historians of China nor cartography experts had ever seen anything like it. It was so odd that experts would have declared it a fake-yet records confirmed it had been delivered to Oxford in 1659. The “Selden Map,” as it is known, was a puzzle that needing solving. Brook, a historian of China, set out to explore the riddle. His investigation will lead readers around this elegant, enigmatic work of art, and from the heart of China, via the Southern Ocean, to the court of King James II. In the story of Selden's map, he reveals for us the surprising links between an English scholar and merchants half a world away, and offers novel insights into the power and meaning that a single map can hold. Brook delivers the same anecdote-rich narrative, intriguing characters, and unexpected historical connections that made Vermeer's Hat an instant classic.
